Where Adam failed, Christ succeeded - Romans 5:12-21

One of the pains of modern life that many of us now have to contend with
is computer viruses. I read recently that there are about 200,000 malicious
programmes that my innocent little computer could get. Now most of them are
pretty harmless or at least a little bit annoying. But occasionally some viruses
hit the national headlines because they are so devastating. In 2006 there was
the "I love you virus" which affected many offices and companies,
shutting down systems around the world. Then there was the "Anna Kournikova"
virus which again affected many computers over the globe. And apparently there
are people in the world who spend all their time making up these viruses which
they then release over the internet or through email. Quite why they do it
I have no idea, perhaps to get some sort of perverse enjoyment out of crippling
people’s computers for days on end! Some of course do it for money, as
they try and trick us into giving them our bank details or the like. Now I
am no expert, but one thing is clear- it is possible for one person to create
a massive problem for millions of people across the globe. One person’s
work can have devastating effects.

Now when we come to the second half
of Romans 5 we find that Paul is telling us that the work of one man has had
devastating effects, not in ruining computers, but in destroying the lives
of every person who has ever lived on the planet. That person is Adam, and
through his rebellion, death and sin came into the world and we have been living
with the consequences ever since. But Paul also tells us that another man,
the God-man Jesus Christ, has come to reverse that devastating work of Adam,
and has done a work even more amazing in its good effects than the destructive
work of Adam. And it is this contrast that Paul is making throughout our passage
which we are looking at together this morning- Adam and Christ. Several times
in the passage Paul will say: "For if Adam did such and such, how much
more has Jesus done such and such…." And "just as Adam did
such and such, so also Jesus did such and such…" And Paul’s
conclusion will be that Jesus has done a far, far greater work than Adam.

But
we may ask, "Well that is all well and good, but why does Paul spend all
this time telling us about Adam. Surely this is a bit alien to us?" After
all last week’s passage was wonderfully simple. We learnt about the results
of us being justified by Christ. Through Jesus’ work on the cross we
can have peace with God and our future with him in heaven is fully guaranteed.
It was wonderful stuff and crystal clear. But this week’s passage by
comparison seems complicated and fairly alien to us with all this talk of Adam.
Well some of the concepts may well be foreign, but Paul is making a very important
point. In these central chapters of Romans, chapters 5-8, Paul is assuring
his readers that Jesus has done everything necessary to bring us safely to
heaven. He has defeated death and sin and the law and has given us everything
we need to get there. There is nothing that can stop the Christian getting
to heaven. We are free from the grip of death, sin and the law. Jesus’
death has covered everything. So last week we saw that there are wonderful
benefits coming from the death of Christ- we have peace with God, forgiveness
and hope. And Paul is now reinforcing the point and showing us that Jesus has
done everything needed to reverse the terrible consequences of Adam’s
sin. In other words he is showing us what it took for Jesus to rescue us. So
do you ever doubt that God has done enough to get you to heaven? Do you ever
doubt that this world’s pain will ever end? Do you ever doubt that God
loves you and will keep loving you? Well be assured from this passage that
God has done everything and more to secure our salvation and to set us free
from the most terrible of our enemies- death itself. So come with me to this
remarkable passage and we’ll see three profound truths to challenge us
and spur us on to live the Christian life this week.

1)
Our Ruin (Vv 12-14)

2) Our Rescue (Vv 15-19)

3) Our Reign (
Vv 20-21)

1) Our Ruin (Vv 12-14)

So first
then, Paul tell us about our ruin in verses 12-14. Verse 12: "Therefore
just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in
this way death came to all men, because all sinned." Notice Paul begins
this section with a "therefore". This section follows on from verses
1-11 by showing how Jesus has overcome death and sin. Now Paul never quite
finishes this verse because his quick mind leads him to talk about something
else. He begins with a "just as" and you expect him to go on to say
"so also", as he does elsewhere in the passage. And we can guess
that Paul would have gone on to write something like "Just as sin entered
the world through one man… so also righteousness came to us through
Jesus," or words to that effect, and in fact he’ll say that in verse
18. But here in verse 12 he is talking about our ruin. And there is a deadly
progression that takes place. Sin enters the world through Adam, death comes
through sin, and so all sinned and thus die. Paul is taking us back to the
garden of Eden where we are told that Adam ate the forbidden fruit of the tree
of knowledge of good and evil and so broke God’s command. It is a clear
rejection of the kingship of God. Adam wants to be the boss of his own life.
He wants to be God, in effect. But the judgement that comes upon Adam is death.
"For dust you are, and to dust you will return," says God. So sin,
rejection and rebellion against God enters the world with Adam’s first
sin and so death comes in too. Death is the punishment for that sin. But Paul
also says that we were all somehow involved in Adam’s sin. Death has
come to all men, that is all people, because all sinned.

Now Paul is
teaching something very important here. He is saying that because of Adam’s
sin, the whole human race is condemned. Paul is saying that Adam represents
all humanity, and because of him, the whole of humanity is ruined. Death has
come to all. We are all condemned. Now we might be a little taken aback at
this. Why should we be condemned when Adam sinned? Why should we have to suffer
for something that someone else did many millennia ago. To us twenty first
century individualists such representation and corporate identity is unfair.
But actually it is not as alien as we might think.

Cast your minds
back, if you will, to that glorious moment at Wembley a few weeks ago, when
Hull won promotion to the Premier League. Now there were about 40,000 Hull
fans there that day, and as we were going back to King’s Cross on the
tube all we could say to each other was, "We won! We did it!" Now
correct me if I’m wrong but I did not see any of you on that pitch that
Saturday. None of the people in the stands were on the pitch. I wasn’t
playing, nor did I score the winning goal. Obviously if it hadn’t been
for a niggling knee injury, Phil Brown the manager would surely have picked
me, but that’s another matter. None of us were playing. We were just
shouting from the sidelines and eating disgusting pies. And yet we all said,
"We won! We played brilliantly!" We were identifying ourselves with
those 11 men on the field. They were representing us. They were us in a way.
So when Hull wins we win. And when Hull lose, we lose. Or take the current
situation in Afghanistan. This week a number of sadly died in an explosion.
But how do we talk about it? We’ll probably say, "We lost four soldiers
this week." And we’ll end up talking about Iraq and Afghanistan,
and we’ll say, "I’m not sure we should stay there," or
something like that. Now we don’t mean by that that we should nip down
the Army Surplice store, don the khaki trousers and hop on a plane to Kabul.
All we are saying is whether we think the government should send more British
troops in. But we align ourselves so much with our country and government that
what they do we do- to a certain extent at least. We hurt when our troops get
involved. We rejoice when our troops are successful. Now those illustrations
don’t fully work, but they show us that we do think as a unity in some
situations be it our favourite team or our country. And it is the same in the
Bible. What Adam did, we did. He is our representative. When sin entered the
world through him, all were ruined. As he ate of that fruit in the garden of
Eden, he was acting on our behalf. And his actions were catastrophic. Sin and
death entered the world, and we were all ruined.

But there is more
to it than that. Because not only are we already ruined by being part of Adam’s
line as human beings, but also we do exactly the same as he did. We are sinful
to the core. That’s not to say there is no good in us, but that sadly
we are thoroughly sinful, rebels against our maker. Paul proves that in verse
13 and 14. We’ve not time to study the details but his point there is
that sin and death have been in the world since Adam’s fall. The law
given to Moses didn’t change anything. As Paul says in verse 20, the
law was added so that the trespass, sin, might increase. Law shows us where
we are wrong. It is like a torch that shows up dirt behind the oven. It’s
not the that dirt wasn’t there before the torch was shone. Rather the
torch shows up the dirt. No, humanity is horribly corrupt, and we are truly
ruined. Children are a perfect example of this. Have you ever known a child
that has to be taught to be naughty and disobedient? As I heard one parent
say recently, children do not have will power, they have won’t power.
You don’t need to train children to sin. They are natural born sinners.
In fact, the very moment Matthew was born and I held him in my arms, I thought
to myself, "You are a little sinner." And he’s been proving
that to me ever since! Babies might seem cute and lovely, but they are wired
to be selfish and turn against God. We sin from our mother’s knee. Five
minutes of parenting will proved the truth of Paul’s words here.

Now
if we take a moment to ponder these truths, then we find that these are very
sobering and deeply troubling doctrines. Paul is saying that in Adam we are
condemned. But not only are were held accountable for our ancestor’s
rebellion, but we took make his mistakes. We carry on his horrific legacy of
sin leading to death. Truly we are ruined. Understand that clearly from Paul.
Our forefather Adam sinned by rebelling against his maker, and ever since then
sin and death has been in the world. And we need to be honest about ourselves
and admit that. Do we truly realise how lost we really are? And if anyone really
honestly believes they are truly a good person, then we simply have not understood
God’s Word properly. None of us are good enough, none of us have the
capacity to please God. None of us deserve his rescue and love. It’s
not that Christians are obsessed with sin. It is that Christians are realists.
And the sooner we see that, the sooner we realise what a terrible situation
we are in and that we need to look outside of ourselves for help. Our ruin.
That’s the first thing we discover from Romans 5.

2)
Our Rescue (Vv 15-19)

But thankfully Paul doesn’t
leave us there. Because secondly we discover our rescue from verses 15-19.
And in these verses Paul is drawing both a contrast and a comparison between
Adam and Jesus and in doing so he is helping us to see the incredible work
of Jesus in all its glory.

a) The Contrast- Vv 15-17-

Let’s
look first at the contrast. And we can tell the contrasts by the words "if
such and such, how much more such and such…" And in verse 15 Paul
contrasts their work. " But the gift is not like the
trespass. For if many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did
God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man Jesus
Christ, overflow to many." The contrast in the work of Adam and Jesus
is between Adam’s trespass, his sin in rebelling against God, and Jesus
bringing grace. How much more was grace better than the trespass. The gift
here refers to Jesus’ saving work on the cross. If the first man Adam
sinned, then Jesus did a better work in bringing grace. You couldn’t
have a greater contrast could you? One sins, the other brings grace. And in
verses 16-17 there is another contrast between their results.
Verse 16: "Again the gift of God is not like the result of the one man’s
sin: The judgement followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift
followed many trespasses and brought justification." So the contrast of
results is that Adam brings judgement and condemnation. He sinned and therefore
brought God’s just judgement on the whole human race. But the results
of Jesus’ actions were to bring justification, meaning to be declared
right with God, friends with God again. His death for us on the cross, the
gift of grace that he brings, allows us to be justified, to have our sins forgiven.
You could not have two more opposite results of two people’s work could
you. It’s the difference between an assassin and a surgeon. The one destroys
life, the other saves life.

But Paul also reminds
us that Jesus’ work was far greater than Adam’s because it required
a greater deed. Paul says in verse 16 that judgment followed just one sin,
but that Jesus’ work of justification followed many. In other words Jesus
had a greater work to do to reverse the effects of all the sin in the world.
All Adam needed to do was to sin once and set the whole process in motion.
Some years ago when my family were living in the West Country, there was a
very bad winter in which snow was a real problem. And the problem was we lived
at the top of a hill. It was easy to get the car down the hill. We just let
the brake off and rolled down. But coming up was virtually impossible. We pushed
and skidded and huffed and puffed, all to no avail, and eventually we left
the car at the bottom. Well Jesus has done the much harder task of pushing
the car up the hill if you like. He has reversed the effects of the fall and
given us grace and justification. You couldn’t ask for a better rescue.

b)
The Comparison (Vv 18-19)-

But Paul doesn’t
just contrast Jesus and Adam. He also compares them. And Paul shows us the
comparisons by saying "just as… so also.." First a comparison
of single acts- Verse 18- "Just as the result of one
trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness
was justification that brings life to all men." Both Adam and Christ did
one act- the only trouble for Adam was that his led to condemnation. But Jesus’
act led to justification. Just one act of Jesus was all it took. One death
on the cross of the Son of God was what it took to rescue us and brings us
back from the grip that death and sin has upon us. But there’s another
comparison- a comparison of single attitudes- Verse 19: "For
just as through the disobedience of one man the many were made sinners, so
also through the obedience of the one man, the many will be made righteous."
Adam’s attitude was one of complete disobedience against God. Jesus’
attitude was one of complete obedience to his father. And through that obedience
many are righteous, forgiven, free from sins and guilt.

Now
I hope the point is clear. Paul is simply telling us that the work of Jesus
in his death and resurrection is far better and greater than the work of Adam.
Instead of condemnation, Jesus has brought justification. Instead of death,
Jesus has brought life. Instead of bondage to sin, Jesus has brought grace
and freedom. Now let me ask. Can you think of a message as liberating and wonderful
as that? The answer is there is none. And are you tempted to believe sometimes
that the Christian life is really not that important, that Jesus is just another
religious guru to take or leave. Or maybe just the weariness of life has dulled
us to the wonder of Jesus. There is so much in life that we have to deal with
that following Christ tends to get swamped with all the other things. The joy
of knowing him isn’t quite what it once was. The wonder at being forgiven
has worn off. We think it odd that younger people or new Christians should
be so keen. Keenness seems almost a bit unsavoury. I mean it’s good but
surely not worth that much is it. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Paul gave his whole life to telling others this glorious message of freedom
and life. There is nothing better. There is no Saviour other than Jesus, and
there is no rescue other than the one he provides. So let us repent of our
cold hearts and recommit ourselves to him this morning. To wholehearted service.
To passionate prayer. To adore him with all our hearts. Because truly he has
given us an extraordinary rescue which we didn’t deserve.

3)
Our Reign ( Vv 20-21)

But then finally we discover
our reign in verses 20-21. Verse 21: "Just as sin reigned in death, so
also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through
Jesus Christ our Lord." Paul brings this chapter to a conclusion by showing
us the two realms that we find ourselves. One realm or reign is the reign of
death. Every human being suffers under that reign and rule. But Paul’s
good news is that through Jesus there is the possibility of living under a
new reign, and a new monarch Jesus Christ. This new reign is the reign of grace,
and it brings to us through Jesus Christ eternal life. Adam brought eternal
death, Jesus brings eternal life. And we must ask ourselves which realm, which
reign am I under? Am I still in Adam’s reign of death, unforgiven, weighed
down by sin and guilt and shame. Or am I living in the reign of grace, having
come to Jesus for forgiveness and new life. That is why the Christian life
is such a wonderful experience. Let no-one ever tell you being a Christian
is dull. Rather it is life to the full, living in the confidence that death
will not be the end. Yes there is often great pain. Christians are not immune
from suffering and death even. But wonderfully we are living under the reign
of King Jesus who has broken the power of death and who will bring us through.

Today
of course people do all sorts of things to avoid death, and even after death
some go to extreme lengths. You may have heard of the new science called cryonics.
It involves having your body frozen immediately after death and then placed
in liquid nitrogen, with the blood being replaced by freezer liquid. The hope
is that when science invents a cure for the disease that you died of, then
you can be thawed out and revived, all at the reasonable price of £60,000.
But the Christian doesn’t need to put faith in such schemes. He knows
that death reigns in this life. But a far more powerful force is at work in
us. Jesus Christ has given us new life through his death and resurrection to
give us eternal life. And that is the hope of the Christian. Life with him
in his kingdom for ever where grace reigns, and wonderfully we too will reign
with Christ as his co heirs.

Is that the hope by which you live day
by day? Grace reigns through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus
Christ our Lord. My grandfather was a committed Christian who loved his Saviour
Jesus Christ, and sought to serve him as Lord. And one of his favourite books
was Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. The book is a story about a man
called Christian who is seeking to get to the Celestial City, and it is written
in the form of a dream that Bunyan had, a parable of the Christian life. And
at my grandfather’s funeral service, I read out the final paragraphs
of the book which talks about death and the hope of overcoming it and so entering
heaven. Fr a Christian staring death in the face, these final paragraphs are
a wonderful reminder of what is ours in Christ. This is what Bunyan wrote:
"Between the travellers and the gate of the city was a deep river, dark
and cold, but there was no bridge. At the sight of the river the pilgrims turned
pale and silent. The two angels said: "You must go through, or you will
never get to the gate." Then they accepted the inevitable. Entering the
water, Christian began to sink. He cried to his good friend Hopeful: "I’m
sinking in deep water…" "Be of good cheer," said Hopeful.
"I feel the bottom and it is good."…. Soon Christian found
ground to stand on, and the rest of the river was shallow. So the pilgrims
sped on towards the gate…. The pilgrims gave their certificates to the
gatekeeper and were admitted into the Celestial City…. Just as the gate
opened to let them in, I got a glimpse of the inner glory of heaven. The whole
city blazed like the Sun. The streets were paved with gold, and the clothes
of those who walked the streets shone with a lightness I had never seen before.
And they wore crowns as kings. And just as they began to praise God saying
"Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty," the gate closed." That’s
was my grandfather’s hope in the face of death. And it can be ours today
as well. The reign of sin and death is defeated. The reign of grace and life
will last forever. That’s the hope the Christian has. Believe it and
live in the light of it. That’s our reign.

Well computer viruses
are one thing, but sin and death is quite another. And yet in Christ sin, death
and condemnation for all has been replaced by grace, forgiveness and life eternal.
So which realm are you in? Death or life? Thank God that because of Jesus we
can move from death to life.

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